Poet Katrina Naomi has been awarded an international grant to help fund her new project, ‘Basho & Beyond’. The grant is being taken from the Artists’ international development fund, funded by the British Council and Arts Council England.
For the project, Katrina will undertake a 5-week writing visit to Japan, where she will write poems in response to walking in rural and urban areas. Here is what Katrina had to say about receiving the grant, and her aims for the project:
Japan is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go – and to get this funding is amazing. Walking and writing tend to go together for me. I’ll begin by walking a series of routes that Basho followed between Tokyo and Kyoto, writing every day, and will then spend 3 weeks walking and writing in Kofu city, so I’ll be writing in response to the rural and urban. I’ve been working this rural/urban divide out in my head since leaving London for Cornwall, so I’ll be able to shake this up even more in my poetry by writing in response to Japan. I find I often write well in response to strangeness and the slightly scary. I’ll be alone in a country where I don’t speak the language for 5 weeks, this will provoke a lot to respond to! I’m looking forward to studying traditional Japanese poetic forms, then meeting contemporary Japanese poets to find out what inspires them in their poetry. It’s a brilliant opportunity, I can’t wait to go.